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Tuesday, 12 November 2013

Colouring with rich and heavy colours Tutorial from Dressy Girl Lisa

I have been asked by some crafters to publish a tutorial on colouring with rich/heavy colours, which can sometimes, be a little intimidating I have to admit!

Here I will show you how to simply create shiny hair using heavy colours. You can achieve this with any alcohol markers. However I do find the brush nib on the Copic brand of markers particularly helpful when it comes to hair.

So.... I have started with a lovely ADU image and 3 Copic Ciao pens. I will also be bringing in 1 other colour later in the process.

I tend to start from the lightest colour, going all the way to the darkest. Everybody is different and find their own way of doing things, and some people prefer to go from dark to light. I have tried to show both.

Here are the pens I chose to start with, and image that has a big area of hair to colour.

I alwats start by colouring the areas that will eventually be the darkest.... this just helps me lay a base and i have something to build from.

I leave that colour to one side, then continue deepening the colour with the next pen.

You can see the depth beginning to show.

And you can also see where the highlights will be.

Fill in the white remaining areas with your final colour.

At this stage, it all looks a bit messy, but dont worry, it will gradually be smoother and more defined as we go on.

As you can see, the hair is now a lot smoother now I have filled in all of the white areas.

The little trick I always find that helps define the shine is bringing in a bright yellow and covering the light brown areas. It just gives it a lift and make it look like the sun is shining on it.

I have also tried to show here, in the small area of hair, how to create the same effect starting with the yellow.

I try to soften the yellow by shading with a light brown.

Then deepening the colour with a much darker brown, but leaving a little of the yellow showing through.

Here is the final result.

I think the effect looks much better when the whole image is coloured.

The skin tone will soften the hair too.

When I'm creating a project I do find it best (in my opinion), to colour the skin first, then you can comfortably choose the hair tones that will match well to the skin.